


I will never forget (this night)

by zanzibar



Series: (Paid for with) Pride and Fate [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2010 Winter Olympics, Discovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 06:59:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3682422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanzibar/pseuds/zanzibar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"February 28, 2010 isn’t the worst day of Ryan’s life.  He’s only 25.  It’s too early for this to be the worst day of his life."</p><p>In which Ryan Suter realizes things don't always go the way he expects them to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will never forget (this night)

**Author's Note:**

> We'll say that this is the bastard combination of my love of the Olympics and my eternal love for the stay-at-home defenseman [see Martin, Paul; Suter, Ryan.]
> 
> Title stolen from 30 Seconds to Mars - Do or Die

Sometimes when Ryan thinks about it he wonders if he ever belonged to Shea at all. 

That’s not to diminish his relationship with Shea. In a lot of ways his relationship with Shea was the most important relationship he’d ever had. Until it wasn’t anymore.

He doesn't spend a lot of time cataloging the differences. He just comes to the startling realization that people weren't joking when they talked about never feeling this way before. 

February 28, 2010 isn’t the worst day of Ryan’s life. He’s only 25. It’s too early for this to be the worst day of his life.

But everytime he closes his eyes he can see the development of the play. He can see the puck tangled in McCreary’s skates and Rafalski trapped too far up the ice. He can feel the puck hitting the back of the net against the pit of his stomach.

Ryan ends the night at plus-1 with almost 32 minutes of ice-time and a silver medal. Shea finishes the night a minus-2 with ten minutes less ice-time and a gold medal. But Ryan’s trying not to compare.

There’s a noisy USA-Hockey sanctioned family dinner after the game, a room off the main dining room reserved and reunions planned before they ever imagined they’d make it this far and before they could have understood the heartbreak making it this far would bring. They pile into a dark and understated steakhouse in one of the old neighborhoods in Vancouver, submerged in the familiar chatter of hockey families Ryan tries to feel at home.

There are hugs after dinner, hugs from parents who are his and parents who aren’t his. Hugs from people Ryan doesn’t know make him mildly uncomfortable, but tonight he wants to sink into them, to sink into these people who he doesn’t know, but who have shared so much of this journey with him.

They cab it back to the Olympic Village, squeezed together in the fewest number of cabs possible, Zach’s thigh pressed tightly against Ryan’s. Their shoulders overlapping and knees knocking together at every turn.

Maybe, in some way, he’s always belonged to Zach. Maybe he’s been sunk since sometime before 2002. Maybe that’s the price of being teammates and champions together a hundred years ago. Maybe he’ll never been able to forget the boy who never hesitated to park himself in front of the net and take cross-checks while grinning behind a full cage.

Maybe the unexpected end of he and Shea’s relationship wasn’t just to focus on hockey or to find out if they really wanted this or if it was convenient or some off-center desire to untangle their lives a little bit from one another. Maybe Shea was practice for the main event.

Maybe he was always unconsciously looking for exactly what Zach always has been. Maybe what he wants is someone who’s fiercely loyal and scrappy and sometimes a little saucy and probably the hardest worker Ryan has ever known.

Maybe all of that is the way to explain how utterly unsurprised he is in Vancouver when he ends up with a lap full of buzzed Zach Parise.

Back in the athlete’s village they all drift quietly into their rooms and slowly reappear to crowd amongst each other in the common spaces, unwilling and unable to be anything but together after all this time. 

Someone shoves a cold beer into Ryan’s hand and he thinks about passing it along. He thinks about disappearing back into his room and curling up to sleep, of somehow taking advantage of a break that’s not really a break. But instead he finds himself planted in a chair, chatting idly with Brooks and Ryan Whitney and watching Patrick Kane talk with his hands while Bobby Ryan smiles indulgently, sipping the beer that he still doesn’t really want and content to watch the world, this microcosm of the world, drift by.

The beer is a story unto itself. Budweiser in the flag wrapped cans. Bought, Ryan knows he heard someone say, across the border. Somebody’s cousin orchestrating a border crossing beer run after a gold medal game he's not entirely sure he'll remember forever. Or never be able to forget. 

The room is warm and crowded with hockey players and tiny figure skaters out past curfew, guys drift back and forth stopping to talk and wandering away, there’s a bunch of snowboarders huddled around the pool table and an odd cross-section of athletes playing cards at the long scarred table, Eminem humming from someone’s iPod.

The Olympics are over and Ryan doesn’t know if he’s upset or relieved.

Zach stops his introspection, he steps forward to fill the space in front of him. He’s barefoot, hat turned backwards, sweatpants sagged practically to his knees and a pair of ragged plaid boxers peeking from above the waistband. He looks 11 years old, the polar opposite of every well-groomed, put-together boy Ryan knew at Culver. He grins impishly at cocks an eyebrow.

Ryan's always done exactly what he’s supposed to, but right now he’s full of a steak dinner he’s not sure he deserved and hollowed by the shadow of victory he can still barely admit he wanted. In an uncomfortable chair that’s weirdly reminiscent of dorm furniture, against a wall that’s in a dark corner, in the Olympic Village in Vancouver he finds that suddenly it’s so easy to throw a lifetime of stay at home defenseman caution to the wind. 

It’s easy to forget the longest rendition of ‘O Canada’ he's ever heard in his life when the alternative is reaching to pull Zach close enough to slide his hands around Zach's hips. When he can keep stretching until his palms flex against the soft cotton of team USA issue sweats, and his fingers span far enough to encase Zach’s ass. 

Once he starts it’s even easier to forget the cool glow of silver when it’s competing with the fireworks of Zach's mouth dipping to nip at his collarbone. Easier to forget the sharp taste of defeat when the alternative is Zach's mouth, tinged with the cool remains of patriotic beer and an unexpected warm familiarity that could never taste like anything but home. 

His thumbs slip up to slide against the warm skin of Zach’s waist and Ryan pulls him even further forward, until Zach’s climbing into the chair with him, knees sliding against the chairs fabric until he’s a solid comforting weight in Ryan’s lap.

“Hi,” Zach smiles, setting his beer down and sliding his hands up Ryan’s arms to tuck under the sleeves of his tshirt.

“Hey,” Ryan succumbs to the desire to press their mouths together again, just so he can taste that familiar smile. To see if it tastes like victory or like defeat or like something else entirely.

There’s a lot of sex in the Olympic village. This is documented through condom counts and personal experiences and folklore and articles in ESPN The Magazine. But it can’t be that surprising. At their heart the Olympics is basically a group of very attractive, well-trained athletes, in peak physical condition, all trapped in what basically amounts to sleepaway camp. All this paired with alcohol and emotional highs and lows and intensely personal, occasionally heartbreaking experiences. 

Obviously the endgame is going to be sex.

In his 25 years on earth, Ryan has had what he would probably describe as an average amount of sex. He’s had good sex and he’s had bad sex. He’s had winning sex and he’s had losing sex. His list of partners isn’t long, but it isn’t short either. 

And there’s nothing he likes more than this.

There’s nothing he likes more than the learning. Nothing he finds more satisfying than pulling Zach into his lap and kissing till his lips are numb and his skin is buzzing with the contact. He likes to know that when he presses his fingers into the hollows of Zach’s hips Zach’s body grinds down against his and that when Zach dips his head and sets his teeth against Ryan’s neck Ryan can’t help but arch his body into the warm familiarity of Zach.

People notice. They must. At one point Phil Kessel leans carelessly against the arm of the chair they’re both occupying at the moment and cheers for the beer-pong tournament that they’re now having on the ping pong table.

They breathlessly abandon the common room for Zach’s empty room later, lips red and abused, 2 beers stashed in the pockets of Ryan’s jeans and Ryan’s fingers tucked the waistband of Zach’s sweats. The room has grown fuller, louder, warmer since Ryan threw caution to the wind. But no one says anything when they disappear into the quiet hallway.

They strip with busy hands, the opposite of economical for once. Stopping to touch and taste and press their finally warm skin against each other. Until finally it’s Ryan’s favorite exploration of all, it’s Zach naked and stretched out on the extra-long twin bed in a mind-stretching throwback to boys in beds of dorm rooms past.

He leaves marks. Pleased when Zach’s hands tangle in the sheets, when he presses his head back against the pillows and moans Ryan’s name while he leaves a track of bite marks across his thighs. But even happier when Zach gives as good as he gets, kneeling between Ryan’s legs and sliding his nails roughly along the inside of Ryan’s calves before sucking an angry red mark just beside his left hip-bone and then grinning up at him, mouth shiny in the dull light from the window.

Zach’s all dark eyes and spiked hair and winter-tanned skin spread against navy sheets when Ryan looms over him. He reaches under the pillow and produces a travel bottle of lube and when he fumbles on the bedside table to produce an Olympic-village issued condom his smile winks, wicked in the darkness and Ryan is helpless to do anything but smile back. 

His hands don’t fumble. Not because he isn’t nervous, but because Zach’s looking steadily up at him and he doesn’t look nervous and he doesn’t look starstruck and most of all he doesn’t look surprised. He just looks absolutely sure that this is what he wants. And when he slides in, slow and sure and swallows Zach’s moans against his tongue Ryan forgets to be anything but equivalently sure.

Sometime, much later, he murmurs sleepily as Zach nudges him onto his back. He makes a questioning noise when Zach reaches for another condom. But he’s forgotten what it is not to want this, what wanting was before he let himself want Zach, he’s forgotten that tomorrow everything goes back to normal and Zach’s in Jersey and he’s in Nashville. And then he forgets everything to watch while Zach throws a leg over his hips and works himself down slow and steady onto Ryan’s dick. He forgets to breathe until Zach’s knees are settled on either side of his waist, and he’s practically lightheaded when Zach takes his time setting the pace, nice easy smooth movements that he alternates with achingly slow shallow rocking that is never quite enough to get Ryan off.

It feels like magic, like this entire day could be some kind of nightmarish dream, something that doesn’t happen to normal guys from Madison who just happen to play in the NHL. Hours ago Zach scored the game-tying goal with 24 second left in the gold medal game, 7 minutes and change into the first overtime Ryan was on the ice when the dream slipped away. In the moments before dawn they rock together for what feels like hours, everything quiet but Ryan’s unsteady breath and Zach whispering his name. 

In the morning they kiss slow and lazy and naked until Ryan absolutely has to get up and do the walk of not-even-a-little-ashamed back to his room to pack and get to the airport. 

He pins Zach against the wall just inside the door, on his way back down to meet the bus, his bag is stuffed haphazardly with team USA-issued clothes and a silver medal that this morning feels like something almost inching towards accomplishment. But that’s nothing compared to Zach, warm and real, against him, everything he never knew he wanted and never imagined he could have. 

On the bus he looks out the window as the Olympic Village shrinks in the distance and thinks about the trail of bite marks he knows adorn Zach’s thighs and shifts just slightly to feel the stretch of skin against the purpling bruise in the shape of Zach’s mouth that sits just below the waistline of his boxer-briefs

Ryan sits next to Shea at the airport while they wait for their flight back to Nashville. It’s normal. Comfortable. There’s no outward hint that Ryan woke up this morning naked and wrapped around Zach Parise. No sign that in 11 days in Vancouver the entire fabric of Ryan’s universe has unravelled and reknit into something new.


End file.
